PCI Express 3.0 will arrive in November

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – The base specification for PCI Express 3.0 should be complete by November, opening the door to a flow of products for the fast interconnect in 2011.

The PCI Special Interest Group released in mid-August a version 0.9 of the spec for the link that has a maximum data rate of 8 GigaTransfers/second. After a 60 day review it expects to release a final version of the base spec.

Typically, products are generally available for a new version of PCI Express about a year after the spec becomes final, said Al Yanes, chairman of the PCI SIG. However, some companies hungry for more bandwidth will roll products early next year.

Mellanox Technologies expects to release before June a version of its 40 Gbit Infiniband adapters using PCIe 3.0. The adapters now ride the PCI Express Gen 2 bus, but the 5 GTransfers/s link is a bottleneck that throttles throughput of the Mellanox cards down to 26 Gbits/s.

One source said Intel will support PCIe 3.0 natively on future versions of its Sandy Bridge processors geared for servers. Those chips could ship before the end of 2011. Initial Sandy Bridge CPUs shipping before April build in PCIe Gen 2.

The new interconnect is expected to be used for four-port 10 Gbit/'s Ethernet chips and next-generation 40 Gbit Ethernet chips now coming to market. It also will be used for high-end graphics cards and solid-state drives.

The PCI SIG does not expect to complete a specification for testing PCIe Gen 3 products until late next year. The group will issue tools to validate designs and start interoperability workshops in the middle of 2011.

The fast interconnect faced delays, in part due to the complexity of delivering an 8 GTransfer technology that could be broadly deployed by cost-constrained PCs. The spec uses dynamic feedback equalization which requires relatively sophisticated design techniques to maintain signal integrity.

You can either invest in a pci-express motherboard,but if you dont have either pci-e or a.g.p (only pci) then i reckon you have a motherboard that uses sd-ram and this will mean you will have to buy a motherboard,
http://xtremenowarnings.com/xtremeno-review-does-xtreme-no-supplement-really-work

This accompanies well with the upcoming high-speed ethernet standards, but I wonder whether achieving faster data rates will have a bearing on low level chip interconnect standards and memory access? Or is this already happening?

Oddly enough, I see advantages for it in small form factor PCs. There are some applications that I would like to use mini ITX motherboards on, but they are limited by size to a single expansion slot. Multiplex access to a PCIe 3.0 slot with an appropriate expansion card (USB 3.0, SATA III, 1394b, etc.) and it might be interesting.
This also give a fast path for Light Peak, which can be used to offboard storage from the main box, among other things.
Larry M.